SS General Dr. Oskar Dirlewanger
Butcher of the Eastern Front and Leader of madmen
Founder and commander of the band of criminals who became the most notorious unit of world war two.
General Dr. Oskar Dirlewanger was born on September 26, 1895. No matter what his historical role as a butcher on the battlefield, he was a very intelligent and apparently almost suicidal brave man. Dirlewanger was born to a middle class family in the Schwaban region of Imperial Germany. He attended University and joined the army as a reserve lieutenant at the beginning of world war one. He was twice wounded and won both classes of the Iron Cross. In the confusing period of postwar Weimar Germany he continued to serve as a soldier in various Freikorps street brigades until as late as 1920. He then finished his postgraduate education, becoming a professor of Political Science. He joined the NSDAP (Nazi party) in 1923, but was eventually expelled after he first joined it because he crashed a staff car while fooling around with a young girl. He rejoined years later.
Dirlewanger's questionable personality came to the surface in 1934 when he was convicted of molesting a young girl. Because of this he became bankrupt and lost his career on top of serving a two year prison sentence. On the loose for only a few months he was arrested and sent to the Dachau concentration camp for a second molestation charge. While at Dachau he contacted an old army friend now high up in the SS and obtained release from the camp on condition that he join the newly formed Condor Legion of Nazi volunteers fighting in the Spanish Civil war in Spain. He was wounded three times and returned to Germany when the unit disbanded in 1939. He was then granted a commission in the SS as a SS-Untersturmführer. However since he was known to be a rather loathsome individual (even by the SS's standards!) he was considered something of a pariah. In June 1940, when an idea came to fruition to form an anti-partisan security unit from all of the convicted poachers sitting in German prisons, the man chosen was Dirlewanger. The 2000 imprisoned poachers were only able to scrounge 84 physically fit volunteers so Dirlewanger was instructed to recruit condemned men from the SS's penal units to flesh out the unit. By July the unit was dubbed after its already infamous commander, SS-Sonderkommando Dirlewanger and numbered 300 or so troopers. The unit was sent to the eastern front held the worst record for atrocities possibly in modern history. Expanded to a battalion in September and then to a full three battalion regiment in 1943, it combed concentration camps, POW centers, and every black hole in Hitler’s Germany and attracted the worst of the worst. During the war Dirlewanger was wounded seven times from 1940-45, always leading his band of criminals from the front. He received the clasp (second award) to his Iron Cross II on May 24, 1942, and that to his Iron Cross I on September 16, 1942. Twice the unit was all but wiped out, only to be rebuilt from scratch. In December 1944 it was doubled in size and formed into a brigade of some 4000 men. On 14 February 1945, the brigade was renamed 36.Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS. Although upgraded to divisional status, it never reached above brigade strength. Dirlewanger would never have the chance to command this division, however.
On the February 15th, Dirlewanger was seriously injured in combat for the twelfth time. Oskar Dirlewanger was recovering from his last wound at a hospital in Althausen, Bavaria, at the end of the war. On June 1st, 1945, French occupation forces used Polish soldiers in their service to forcibly bring him to the Althausen jail. Dirlewanger was beaten and tortured over the next several days. He died under torture from the Polish guards during the night of June 4-5. This information was suppressed at the time, and this led to many fantastic stories of sightings of him all over the world. He was something of a Nazi version of Bigfoot with sightings of him everywhere. He was said to have served in the French Foreign legion at Dien Bien Phu, or spotted in Paraguay teaching at the military academy, or even as an advisor to the CIA-backed dictator General Mohammed Naguib in Egypt. These stories however were put to an end when his remains were exhumed at Althausen and identified in 1960. His troubled soul is buried there in a plainly marked grave.
Sources
Thomas L. Jentz - Panzertruppen Vol 2: 1943-1945
French L. MacLean - The Cruel Hunters: SS-Sonder-Kommando Dirlewanger Hitler's Most Notorious Anti-Partisan Unit
George F. Nafziger - The German order of battle: Waffen SS and other units in World War II
36.Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS at www.feldgrau.com
